Will deficit hawks walk the walk, or just squawk the squawk?

Republicans in Congress are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits because, they claim, it would add too much to the current budget deficit. So, in the same interest, will they also let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year?

more proof that the right wing bug-a-boos of fannie and freddie amount to a hill of beans, especially when compared to the criminal lack of revenue the right created with their give away to the wealthy coupled with unlimited spending on unfunded wars of THEIR choice.

Graphic based on same numbers from same CBO that estimated Healthcare bill was deficit neutral before passage, but say it’s budget buster now that it’s past.

Got to love it. I work in federal government and see the waste every day. We recently doubled the size of the public affairs staff in our organization from 4 to 8. We still can’t figure out what those new yuppies are doing falling all over themselves, but they are sure enjoying spending your tax dollars you are paying them. This is just one small example of unnecessary spending going on…

Seriously, despite all the fun Republican vs Democrat snipping (which I enjoy), NEITHER party really seriously attacks spending. Yes, the Clinton economy was better, not because they really controlled spending that much, but because we happened to be a big economic up turn which brought in enough money to COVER spending. But in the Reagan, Bush HW, and Bush W economies (and Obama so far) the economy isn’t bringing in enough.

So what do we do? The Republicans will NEVER decrease military spending, only increase it…true of slight majority of Democrats too. Obama got in office and increased military spending and was ATTACKED immediately by the Republicans (ie. Fox News) for hating our troops and “gutting” the military. The military budget has only gotten bigger under Obama. The Republicans won’t DARE attack Medicare (they want those seniors to vote for them)…and social security is pretty much off the table. While you can cut programs like NASA (which even IF eliminated wouldn’t touch the deficit) are still too popular to eliminate entirely.

So what did Bush, Reagan, Clinton, etc do? Promise to SLOW spending or increase by 1 or 2% or make the Department of Ag and State cut their budgets by 5% (while asking them to do more work).

No one, Republican or Democrat, has ever had the balls to seriously cut the military, medicare or social security, OR increase taxes to match spending. Until they do..this is ALL just talk talk talk talk. Either raise taxes or slash the military/medicare or shut up.

James Galbraith calls serious bullshit on “deficit hawks” in his remarks to the Commission on Deficit Reduction. Money quote, ” You are plainly not equipped by disposition or resources to take on the true cause of deficits now and in the future: the financial crisis…Thus the interesting twist in your situation is that the Republic would be better served by advancing no proposals at all”

You know Goldy, it’s not fair to blame Republicans for not cutting spending. The people who elect them are generally in favor of pork-barrel projects that benefit THEIR district. This is pretty universal and not a Rep/Dem specific thing.

No one, Republican or Democrat, has ever had the balls to seriously cut the military, medicare or social security, OR increase taxes to match spending. Until they do..this is ALL just talk talk talk talk. Either raise taxes or slash the military/medicare or shut up.

an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process. And for many small and midsize oil companies, the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by var-ious credits. These companies’ returns on those investments are often higher after taxes than before.

“Got to love it. I work in federal government and see the waste every day. We recently doubled the size of the public affairs staff in our organization from 4 to 8. We still can’t figure out what those new yuppies are doing falling all over themselves, but they are sure enjoying spending your tax dollars you are paying them. This is just one small example of unnecessary spending going on…”

Any attempt to belittle government spending of this sort ignores the considerable waste in private industry. In my own (private) company, they are working to reduce expenses by cutting the headcount at the departments which actually do the work. Yet over the past ten years, administrative ranks (administration, accounting, internal tech support, etc.) has doubled to the point where it is now over 20% of the total head count.

At Boeing, workers who are regularly derided by right wingers as being “overpaid lazy union loafers” can do little more than shake their head and curse under their breath at executive decisions which will cost the company billions in the long term – a fact well known to those who actually know how to build airplanes.

The chart posted by Goldy shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Ever since Reagan, the Republicans have been running on “the deficit” as an issue, but as soon as they get into office you won’t hear a peep from them about it.

Ask David Stockman, Reagan’s first budget director, about his attempts to balance the budget. He learned very quickly that cutting taxes for the wealthy and lining the pockets of large military contractors and other big corporations was the primary goal. Deficit reduction was so far down the list it couldn’t be seen, if it was even on the list at all. He thought the big budget battle was going to be with the Democrats. What he found out was that the budget was busted (in a big way) by the Republicans even before it was submitted to Congress. But that didn’t stop the Republicans from attempting to blame the Democrats for the budget deficits, anyway.

18 My impression is that waste is generally a function of an organization’s size, not of the entity’s being either public or private in nature. There are some differences which could reflect on wastefulness, for instance, to whom a public v. private entity is accountable. Generally, though, a large, established private company is at least as wasteful as an equal-sized private agency.

As a former DoD executive, I can tell you that “private” was always more expensive and wasteful.

Contractors (which got pushed heavily during the previous admin — I retired in 2008) cost me more than twice what a fed employee cost (including all benefits) and our guys had to train them and babysit them.

Of course we had our slobs, but 99% were dedicated people who as a matter of honor were routinely giving more time than they were ever paid for to get the job done.

If you want to cut waste, private defense contracting — services and gear — is a target rich environment.

21: When the final history of the George W. Bush administration is written, it will be about how the Republicans tried to downsize government by outsourcing much of it’s functions, at several times the cost they would have paid had they continued to keep it in-house. They even tried to out-source a war, for heaven’s sake!

Yes, but I’m talking about my TAX dollars that are NOT at work!!!!!! The hell with your private company waste. They can go out of business for all I care if they don’t pay attention to their inefficiencies and bottom line.

These yahoos that I work around are WASTING my TAX dollars. My point was that there is a lot of waste in government that can be addressed. For example, I personnaly see absolutely no use for the Deptarment of Education. We did just fine without it for more than a couple of hundred years and have gone down hill nationally ever since it started!

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